Dalliance in the Desert, Conclusion

I am happy to report that, although resting flat on my back, things can be said to be looking up. Well they would, wouldn't they?

Nothing like a few days of comfort at the Compte de Rienville's chateau to raise ones spirits. (Plenty of LaTour, the 1996 vintage, didn't hurt either). But now back to my narrative.

When Matilda Hatt, the Professor and myself reached the coastal Libyan town of Ajdabiya, we discovered that it was under attack, and that mass confusion reigned. The Professor was losing it, and kept babbling on about event horizons, black holes, anti-matter and a slew of other esoteric terms. We sandwiched the professor between us, told him to shut up, and made our way as best we could to the docks. This involved a running gun fight with some of Gadhafi's mercenaries, who quickly learned that Tilly and I were no slouches when it came to marksmanship, and after suffering a number of casualties, went off to pursue less dangerous prey.

The dhow was where it was supposed to be. We clambered in, and Tilly, after some effort, got the ancient Perkins engine to work. Looking at that engine reminded me of Bogart and Hepburn in The African Queen, and I could only hope that the engine would work here as it did there.

The Professor had shut up. Either that, or he had gone catatonic.

Slowly, very slowly, we made our way out of the harbour. Tilly knew where we were headed, but had not shared that information with me. This was standard practice in The Trade -- you couldn't be tortured and confess that which you did not know.

A number of things then occurred.

"Shit!" said Tilly. "Look!"

I peered over her shoulder, and saw a Libyan gunboat bearing down on us. Not that big, but a lot bigger than our craft. Tilly yanked the tiller, over-compensated, and fell in.

I reached for her, missed, then grabbed her ankle as she began to drift away on what must have been a severe current. I hauled her aboard, ass over teakettle as it were. She looked up, and calmly said, "I owe you one."

"Two, to be precise."

"Done. Now get down or --"

I yelled as a searing hot flame coursed through my thigh, and realized I had been shot. We were not, I realized, the only ones abroad that day that could shoot effectively.

"Hang on, Simone!" shouted Tilly. "Just hang on. It won't be long. Here, use this." Tilly tore off her blouse. "Use it to stop the bleeding."

The sight of Tilly Hatt in a brassiere seemed to snap the Professor out of whatever mental oasis he had fled to. He grabbed the blouse, and efficiently began to fashion a tourniquet and twist it above the wound. I screamed, partly because of the intense pain, but also because I saw that the gunboat was now levelling a large cannon at us, and I cursed that all this would end by the actions of a thuggish clown like Gadhafi.

Then the gunboat blew up.

"About bloody time!" screamed Tilly. "That's the Navy, always arriving at the last possible moment."

I wondered what she was talking about, when to my right, some 200 meters away, a submarine broached the surface. Nuclear, Los Angeles Class. At which point I passed out.

I learned later that the dhow had been towed to Naples, and my wound attended to by medical personnel on the submarine. I asked to be sent to the Annunziata hospital, and also managed to get in touch with certain people I knew who would assist me. Naples, after all, was my home town, and I have an odd relationship with certain folk best known as 'gentlemen of the South'. Tilly and the Professor had to stay with the submarine, but before she left she gave me her two debts, as promised. Two memory sticks, to be exact. One for Sir Harry, already picked up by his minion Cyril, and the other for me. What those memory sticks contained -- well, that's for another day.

So now back to the real world, and the stunning news about Japan. As I absorbed the magnitude of all that had occurred, I remembered that the most frightening words one can hear from Government are simply, "Stay calm. No need to panic."

Selah.